NationStates Jolt Archive


Ecdysis

The Osage
15-03-2006, 23:13
Monhin looked with an air of disbelief at the paper in front of him.

The most ancient and esteemed body of the Nonhonzhinga, immortal and intact, subduers of the Necromancer, righteous heirs to the Empty Throne, allies of the Last Emperor, have decided in their wisdom born of a nigh infinitude of years to order the resignation of your person, the Tenth Fleet-General Monhin Dapa, due to the loss of Osage assets in Sol. An incompetance hearing will be held, and you are ordered to report to the Chamber-Fortress on...

His white eyes flared, and the paper burnt. Thrown out of his own fief thanks to the arrogance of his subordinate, the malice of a Solar coalition, and the schemes of a rampant construct. An incompentence hearing meant only one thing: execution.

And so close. So very, very close.

His fleet was some 250 strong against the nominal power of a thousand military ships and police ships outnumbering even those.

And yet... there was cause for rejoicing. Minds under his control had been seeded in Osage provinces, and a bare minority of the fleet-generals would follow his lead. The Ancestral Legions, under his handpicked Necromancer-Lords, would follow him, as would the miloliths overseen by a mind that he himself created.

The banners...he had the gun, red, two green, and the black banners under his control, and the rest were no match for the combined power these assets , the Ancestral Legions, and the miloliths presented.

So, on the ground, he had no fear.

In space.... His 250 ships were worth every three Akadan thanks to the upgrades in weaponry and armor he had worked to develop, and he had at most three other fleet-generals out of eight on his side.

The police fleets might, at best, equalize the disparity between his armada and the backwards fleets of the Nonhonzhinga, but he felt confident most of them would see which way the wind was blowing.

This is it, then. How quickly I have come to this decision. I am a fleet-general no longer. I am Monhin Dapa, Emperor of the Osage Empire, and I come to claim this right.


----


The pale, thin man in black robes moved among the dead, murmuring words as they worked over strange devices of veined black metal, periodically aiding one or the other. His staff, a worn, ancient affair that did not fit the young man's age, pulsed with a red light that seemed altogether evil in the gloom.

The Necromancer-Lord had heard the tidings. Monhin Dapa had returned from Sol, and brought with him death and a iron fist. He had claimed the Empty Throne, and immediately swung into an altogether unexpected action.

The Ancestral Legions rose at his command, swarming over loyalist territory. The miloliths had provided a hard edge to the soft, rotting flesh, and together with the strange armored men-golems that wielded cannons with their hands, Monhin's armies had met and routed the golem-and-spear affairs that the Nonhonzhinga had rustled together.

The only thing keeping his victorious armies from breaking down the Chamber itself was the mighty spells that periodically radiated from its walls, gigantic tapestries of spellwork that exceeded any power that a single fleet-general, no matter how individually powerful, could muster.

The pale, tall, thin man with the ancient staff heard all these things, and whispered spells of encouragement to his Legionaries. He knew his time was short. He was one of the fifty that commanded a million, and yet in Monhin's absence and through his complicated and ingenious shadow-work he had killed off fifteen right under the Nonhonzhinga's nose and added their flocks to his own. They wanted nothing to do with the Necromancers or their charges, and Monhin was busy in Sol.

Monhin was likely wondering why fifteen million ancestral legionaries were currently involved in the building of concentric rings of defences under a black-clouded area, but the Necromancer-Lord had sown tales and legends of a Nonhonzhinga-orchestrated takeover of some of the Legions and the building of a new fortress there among Monhin's spies, and to the Nonhonzhinga, who were caged, this was little more than another black land where the dead trod.

He had little time left. Soon enough the miloliths would come over this dead land. He was powerful, and his phagobiotic spells had had time to take root, sending the swirling wakon-currents of the organized systems that made up Life spiraling around the tall, dark spire where he lived, yet he did not know if he was strong enough yet, or skilled enough in the tomes his father had left him, to defeat this...Emperor.

He liked black. The knowledge that the only life around for miles and miles was his rising, starlike presence invigorated him. Of course, that might also have been the gigantic whirlpool of soul energy gradually draining into him.

A thin smile broke his pale, soft features. He had a name onc, but his father had erased it so that he might survive. They said he took after him, but he had never seen the man they said could make the Nonhonzhinga cower with a word.

They said he hadn't needed to fight them, because they followed his every whim.

They said that he had frustrated the man who now calling himself Emperor over and over.

They said that his first name was a black word.

Sikal his father had wanted him called, a name forged with black double meanings.

And with her dying breath, his mother, a wily if unimportant concubine, had whispered his last name.

Kasaros.
The Osage
17-03-2006, 03:08
The gaunt face's mouth turned down in a thin frown as it strode across the realm it inhabited.

The telepathic lance had emerged from his deeper consciousness, framing a question tinged with the imperial authority. It had flared within his mind, drowing out his previous train of thought, and then faded gradually as he sought a response.

The emperor of the Osage seeks an audience.

What pretention! The emperor requests an audience. As if he deigned to speak with this lowly man.

The man's eyes blazed with a black light, and his whole form hummed slightly with the immense power contained within.

I am Kasaros. The heir to Irul, the finisher of his plans. This emperor is like unto an ant to me.


"Necromancer."

He froze, casting soul-tendrils about before he located the sleeping presence to his left, and turned. "Fleet-General."

Monhin Dapa emerged out of nothingness. "Do not patronize me, necromancer. You are no servant of the Nonhonzhinga, and as such you will address me by my title."

Emperor. The name burned itself into his mind, against his will.

"That art is not yours to claim, emperor." He spat the word out with derision.

Monhin's eyes widened an inch. Inside, a raging storm of ideas flittered about.

"Whose, then, if not mine?"

"Kasaros."

"He lives no more." And yet, Monhin began to see it in the face and manner of this powerful necromantic lord...

"He lives again." The Necromancer spat on the ground.

The emperor carefully considered the evidence and nodded knowingly. "A son, hidden from the Empire."

"Do you know why the god-twins forbade necromancy, emperor?" His eyes waxed bright.

Monhin Dapa's face grew dark.

Solid shadow arched around Sikal Kasaros' form as he took a step forward. "Because it was the only thing that could harm them."

The phagobiotic spells that burned from Sikal's hand struck Monhin hard, squeezing his mindspace down to a tiny speck in which the emperor fought to escape.

"You feel it now, don't you? The essence of the true power Kasaros had. You thought yourself wise in discovering his texts on the very basics of necromancy. Hah! How much more you have to learn, emperor."

He fell to his knees, his soul siphoning away in an expanding cloud of pure energy.

"My my. What a large soul you have, emperor."

Monhin quietly smiled, a move that unnerved the thin, pale, black-robed man walking closer. He put his hand within his robe, removed an expensive Solar pistol, and fired a series of shots into the Second Necromancer.

"My Empire has had enough Necromantic Wars, Kasaros."

He stood up, then, and looked at the bleeding, skeletal shape in front of him. "You have use, still, Kasaros. You think and act like your father did, and were it not for the cruelest kind of trickery, your new magic would have ended me. I find, as the old cliche goes, that it would be unwise to waste such an asset."

"Your father's death was out of my hands, young..."

"Whatever your name is, Kasaros. Now, let's see, I don't think walls have ever been installed in a non-artificial soul, have they?"

Monhin grinned, as over his shoulder his forces were minced to pieces by the strange construct-traps that this new Kasaros had devised.

"Unwise, indeed."

And, quietly, he began to heal Sikal Kasaros of his wounds.

---

The Nonhonzhinga's chamber was quiet.

"The Second Necromancer has proven to be under Monhin's direction, as we suspected. The brief confrontation between his New System and the Ancestral Legions appears to have been a feint. Our armies have been routed on every front. The Bloodpikes remain to us, but they will prove no match onc e Monhin chooses to strike at this place."

The wizened old speaker turned over the stand to an even more wizened man. This man's face was a mass of wrinkles, his snow-white beard went past his waist, his mottled, brownish robe was accented with a rotting piece of wood that one assumed was his staff.

Old men whispered quietly. Had they been anyone else, their awe would have been manifest, but these men had been there.

He spoke, in ancient Osage, slowly and deliberately. "As I did after Nocaga passed and returned, we shall do now. This second abomination will fall as did the first."

And the Nonhonzhinga disappeared.